
Qass. 
Book. 



1 



.T23 




Till-: 




ASSASSINATION 



r^siirent of tl^t Snittir §titU^ 

u I ' I , ( J J 



^-^ 



OVERRULED FOR THE (JOOD OF OUR COrNFRY. 



A Discourse Preached in the M. E. Chui-ch-^ 
' , Pittston, Penna., June 1st, 1H(}5. 



Rev. N. G. PARKE, A.M. 




PITTSTON, i^A.: 
GAZETTE OFFICE, PRINT 

1865. 




tup: 



ASSASSINATION 



i^rtsttrcnt oi tht Slnitrir <§t;tt^5 



CAT.RRULKD FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUXTRY, 



A Discourse Preaclied in the M. E. Church, 
Piltston, I'eima., June 1st, 1865. . 



Rev. N. G. PARKE, A.M. 




riTTSTON, PA. : 
GAZETTE OFFICE, PRINT, 

1 8 G 5 . 



Pittston, June 2d, 1SG5. 
Rev. N. G. Pakke : 

Dear Siii : 

The Committee appointed by the Union Meeting of the citizens of 
Pittston, for observing the National Fast Day, occasioned by the death 
of the kite President of the United Stales, solicit in their behalf and at 
their request, a copy of the discourse delivered in the M. E. Church by 
you on the occasion, for publicati( n. 

Respectfully yours, 

A. TOMPKIXS, 

A. KNAPP, 
CHAS. LAW, 
JOHN A. PRICE, 
DAVID MORGAN, 
BENJ. HARDING, 

B. D. BEYILV, 
JOHN RICHARDS, 
G. M. RICHART, 
THOS. LEYSIION, 
THEO. STRONG, 

Covimiitee. 



Presbyterian Parsonage, 

rutston, Pa., JaneGlh, 1805. 

Messrs. A. Tompkins, A. Knapp and others. 

Gentlemen ; 

The discourse, a copy of which you have requested for publication, 
was prepared hastily and witliout the most remote idea of its publica- 
tion. It is, however, at your disposal. 

Yours, truly, 

N. G. PARKE. 



SERMOX. 



GENESIS 50 : 20. 

" But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good." 

It is difficult always to know the design of God in events 
that are passing. After they are fully past, history reveals 
their design, and for that reYelati<:>n we must be willing to 
wait. 

For tlie revelation of the design of God in the rebellion 
that has culminated in the assassination of our President, it 
does not appear that we will have to wait long. The 
design of those who inaugurated the rebellion, according 
to their confessions, was, to establish more firmly the insti- 
tution oi slavery, by severing their connexion with the free 
North, and one design of God in it was evidently to destroy 
that institution. Belshazzar's doom was not more clearly 
written on the wall of his palace by the fingers of a man's 
hand, than the doom of slavery has been w^ritten in the 
blood that this rebellion has shed. Still it is not well to 
limit the design of God. He may have other purposes to 
accomplish, with reference to which, what is now so ap- 
parent, may be but as the first fruits. It is never best to 
be very confident in interpreting the designs of God, until, 
in his providence, they are made clear. " Secret things 
belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are 
revealed belong unto us and to our children." Of Avhat has 
been made clear, we may speak with confidence. 

Those who planned and executed the assassination of the 
President, meant it for evil. They had indulged a feeling 
of hatred towards him personally, and they desired the 
destruction of the government he administered — an end 



6 

they hoped to accomplish 1)y introducing sucli confusion 
in its administration as would, in their judgment, flow from 
the assassination of the President and his prominent advi- 
sers. They were short-sighted, as those having evil pur- 
poses to accomplish usually are. The brethren of Joseph 
hated him and sold liini as a slave. This wickedness of 
their's God overruled for good. The designs of Daniel's 
enemies in Babylon were evil, but their efforts to injure 
liim only gave him prominence and power and caused a 
knowdedge of liis God to be spread abroad. The purpose 
of Haman was to destroy all the Jews in the dominion of 
Ahasuerus. It was conceived in sin and evinced the 
most bitter cruelty and hatred, but God designed it for his 
people's good and the overthrow of their enemies. Haman 
was hanged on the gallows he prepared for Mordecai, " and 
j\[ordecai went out from the presence of tlie King in royal 
aj)})arel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold, 
and with a garment of fine linen and purple." Thus Jebo- 
vali thwarts the purposes of evil men, and overrules their 
most earnest and apparently successful efforts for the good 
of his people and the glory of his great name. The rebel- 
lion, from its commencement to its close, has been an illus- 
tration of this truth. That was a dark day in our history 
on which the rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter; yet that 
fire roused a spirit of patriotism in the loyal North, with- 
out which the rebellion could not have been crushed. The 
defeat of our army in the first Bull Eun battle caused 
many to despair of our success, but that defeat was neces- 
sary to show to our Government the determination of the 
rebels and their strength, and to encourage them in the 
Avork of self destruction. Our success in that battle might 
have crushed tlie rebellion but not the ea-g- from which 
rebellion is hatched. Our defeat at Fredericksburg filled 
our hospitals to overflowing with the wounded and the 
dying, but it prci)arcd the way for the Emancipation 
Proclamation— it nerved the President to make, and the 
Nation to sustain him in carrying out, that immortal proc- 



lamatiou of Liberty to tlic enslaved. The assassination of 
the President threw a shadow over the hearts of the loyal 
millions of our land, but it has not been without its happy 
efi'eets on the cause he so much loved and in behalf of 
which so many brave men have died. It is of some of 
these effects alread}^ discoverable that I propose to speak. 

The assassination is not a matter entirely sej^arate irom 
the rebellion, it is but one scene in the same tragedy. The 
rebellion however is a broad subject, too broad for us to 
enter on here. It has furnished largely, material for the 
historian, the artist, the statesman, and the moralist as well 
as for the pi'eacher ; and we are really too near the scene 
and the time of the gigantic struggle to write of it calml}- 
and intelligently. The dust and the smoke of the battle 
have not yet passed away. If the curtain has fallen on the 
last scene there is very much work yet to do, the doing of 
which calls for wis<lom, and grace, and strength ; and the 
wisest speculations in regard to the rebellion are worth 
much less just now than earnest prayer to God for guidance 
in this eventful crisis in our country's history. 

Tlie effects already apparent, of the assassination of the 
President of the United States on the cause lie represented, is 
the subject to which I wish your attention. Of his gov- 
ernmental views, character, work and death, I have spoken 
to some of you at length on a former occasion. 

1. One marked effect of the assassination has been to 
unite us more firmly as a people, and to strengthen our deter- 
vtination to exterminate treason in our land. There is in a 
government like ours, composed of separate States and em- 
bracing a vast extent of country, varying in soil, produc- 
tions and climate, and with a population differing widely 
in their habits, a tendency to undue State-isolation. We 
have felt it, and the prevalence of the pestiferous and dis- 
integrating doctrine of State Rights, as set forth by Calhoun 
and his followers, had well nigh swept away the founda- 
tions of our Federal Government. With many of the pro- 



8 

fessed friends of tlie government, it was questioned whether 
there was authority in the Federal Constitution for the 
suppression of the Confederate Rebellion — a rebellion of 
states, and if there was such authority, it was a question 
whether there was power in the government to execute the 
laws. The Federal Government was spoken of as "a rope 
of sand," and at the time the rebellion was inaugurated, its 
power to hold together under the pressure brought to bear 
against it was exceedingly problematical. Men in Con- 
gress told the nation boldly that if tlicy could not have 
their own way they would dissolve the Union and crush the 
Government, and they verily believed they could do it. 
The assassination of the President has made the citizens of 
the different States feel that they have a common country. 
He belonged to the whole country, he was our President. 
This was the feeling of all loyal men North, South, East 
and West, as his lifeless body was borne from the capital 
of the nation to its resting place in the West. His blood 
cemented us. Those petty jealousies that have manifested 
tliemselves between loyal States of different sections of our 
country, have been buried, as the sons of these States have 
gathered round the cofiin of their fallen chief and vied 
with each other to do him honor. And not only so, the 
determination has been strengthened to crush rebellion, that 
foul spirit of the pit that has stained our land with blood. 
In our rejoicings over the submission of the insurgents, we 
were disposed to overlook what rebellion has done — to 
forget the battle fields on which the bones of loyal men are 
bleaching, to forget the prisons in which loyal men were 
starved by the thousands, to forget the long rows of maimed 
and suffering and dying men that we have seen stretched 
in our hospitals, but this bloody deed dried up the kindness 
of the Nation's heart, and the cry is now for justice. Over 
the remains of the assassinated President the vow has been 
made that treason must die. This is the vensfeance de- 
manded by an incensed peo})le, and that must be had. 
Those who administer the troverument understand this, 



and mercy mingled with justice will henceforth be meted 
out to such as are guilty of treason. 

2. It is true, further, tltal the assassmafion of the Presi- 
dent has te7ided to reveal more fully the base designs of the 
leaders of the rebellion, to show what they are, and what they 
are willing to do, in order to accomplish their vile purposes. 
"We speak of the leaders of the rebellion particularly, be- 
cause they are the guilty ones in all this matter. The in- 
vestigation growing out of the assassination has not been 
completed, but enough has been unearthed to show that 
this foul murder was planned and executed by those who 
were in the interest of the rebellion, and with the sanction 
and co-operation of its representative men. They laid the 
plan to fire our cities in the stillness of the night, which, if 
successful, would have burned up thousands of inoffensive 
women and children. They laid their plans for burning 
and blowing up our ships, which, if they had been success- 
ful, must have destroyed the lives of vast numbers, who 
were in no sense belligerents. The}'' made an earnest effort 
to introduce the yellow fever in our most populous cities> 
and their failure we can only attribute to the protecting 
care of our Heavenly Father. They have not only wil- 
fully and deliberately starved our soldiers in their prisons> 
they placed under those prisons torpedoes, with a view of 
blowing them up, in case of danger lest the prisoners might 
escape. And to crown all, they laid their plans to assassi- 
nate the President and the heads of the different Depart- 
ments, civil and military, and in this effort they have been 
partially successful. The claim of men who could engage 
in work so diabolical as this, or even connive at it, to be 
" the very soul of honor," is the garb of the serpent who 
would be esteemed as " an angel of light." The revelations 
that have been made in the progress of the investigations 
growing out of the assassination, have been humiliating and 
painful exceedingly, but it is well they have been made. 
It ie well for our government to understand fully the ''•har- 



10 

acter of the men witli whom it has to deal — and on this 
subject thej cannot now have any reasonable doubts. 

3. The views of the President on-^he subject of Emanci- 
pation, reconstruction, confiscation, and other subjects 
growing out of the war, would no doubt in the main have 
been carried out if he had lived. They would, however, 
have been strenuously opposed in some directions and pos- 
sibly defeated. But his death has disarmed opposition and 
made it certain that his vieivs will he carried out. From the 
Emancipation Proclamation, on the propriety of which the 
country was divided at one time, not one jot or tittle will 
be taken away. If the President can no longer reason, the 
words that have fallen from his lips on the subject have 
new power. The eloquence of the President, dead, has 
been felt in behalf of justice and right and his country, as 
the eloquence of the President alive, never could have been 
felt. He has touched and moved the heart of the Nation, 
and stamped his views on that heart. To-day, the govern- 
mental views of Mr. Lincoln are esteemed no less than the 
views of Washington, and will be most sacredly carried 
out, for which the conspirators against his life may take 
the credit. "They thought evil against him, but God meant 
it unto good." They designed to defeat the policy of the 
President, but God meant to establish it beyond a perad- 
venture. 

4. "We think it is clear, also, that the assassination has re- 
vealed the strength of our Government to ourselves, and to the 
monarchies of the old world. The impression did prevail at 
the breaking out of the war, as has already been intimated, 
that in what is known as the Federal or Central Govern- 
ment, there was very little strength. It was regarded as a 
ship that would answer very well for a smooth sea, fanned 
by gentle zephyrs, but good for nothing on a sea lashed into 
fury by angry winds. The leaders of the rebellion were of 
this impression, and so were those who sympathized with 



11 

tliem beyond the sea. Tliey honestly believed that on the 
inauguration of a civil war among us, we would go to pieces. 
There were loyal men also, who had their fears on the 
subject. The progress of the war has removed effectually 
this delusion. It has opened our eyes and the eyes of the 
world on this subject. It has shown the character of the 
timber in our ship. It has made it clear that there is 
power in the Federal Government — strength in our union. 
No other people ever prosecuted such a war as we have 
just passed through and came out of it as slightly exhausted 
as this nation appears to be. After a conflict of four years, 
in which we have been expending millions daily, and in 
which hundreds of thousands have fallen, we are apparently 
stronger than when the war commenced. But the assassi- 
nation of the Chief Magistrate of the Nation was a new trial 
of our strength or rather a trial in a new direction. The 
Central Government was beheaded, and must not the body 
die ? was there power in this body after decapitation, to 
readjust itself and supply a new head ? and the functions of 
the organism still go on as though nothing had occurred ? 
These questions are answered by the peaceful flow of the 
Nation's life to-day — and should the new President and all 
the Heads of the Departments be assassinated to-morrow, 
their places would be supplied, and the functions of the 
government go on without interruption. The life of the 
nation — I mean our nation — is not in those who administer 
the government, however it may be with the governments 
of the old world : it is in the hearts of the loyal millions, 
who find protection under the banner of Stars and Stripes. 
The heart of our beloved President has ceased to beat, but 
the heart of the Nation beats on, and its strong pulsations 
are felt to the extremities of the great organism. If the 
life of the French Nation flows through the heart of Napo- 
leon, and the life of all the nations of Europe through their 
monarcbs and aristocrats, the life of our nation did not flow 
through the heart of Mr. Lincoln and those associated with 
him in oiEice. We mourn the death of our President, but 



12 

iiis death has shown to us and to the monarchs of the old 
world, as perhaps no other eveot could have done, the re- 
cuperative, self-adjusting and readjasting power of our 
government. 

5. Again, the assassination of the President, hy the sym- 
pathy it has called forth in our behalf in England, has ten- 
ded to soften our feelings towards her, and may he the means 
of averting a loar ivith that jpotver. We regard this as one of 
the most marked effects of this sad providence. England in 
all this struggle has treated us badly, and we feel it. We 
speak this not in anger, but in sorrow. There have indeed 
been noble exceptions. There are Englishmen who have 
ably and wisely defended our cause, and who have not 
faltered in their work in our darkest days. We feel our 
indebtedness to them, and love to think of them. But 
generally it is true, that the government, the press, the 
churches, and the people have from the commencement to 
the close of the struggle given their sympathy and aid to 
our enemies. This we believe is the testimony of our 
firmest friends in Britain, The government, before it could 
have known of the blockade of our Southern ports, ack- 
nowledged the Confederates as belligerents, and thus made 
them legalized pirates on the high seas. Semraes, of the 
Alabama, who deserves hanging as much as any pirate ever 
did, was among the first to surrender to Gen. Sherman. 
Why was he not arrested and treated as a pirate ? Because 
he acted for belligerents with letters of marque. When we 
captured Mason and Slidell in an informal way, the agents 
of the insurgents on their way to Europe to make mischief, 
our peculiar circumstances were not regarded for a moment, 
and at once the tocsin of war was sounded, and we were 
given to understand that we must give up those mischievous 
rebels or " fight England." We wisely gave them up, under 
the impression that one war at a time is enough. England 
as a government has not done all for the Confederacy that 
she could have done, but she has done all she dared to do 



13 

The cluirches too, with rare exceptions, liave sympathized 
witli the government and have occnpied the same position, 
although they knev/ that our struggle was against slavery, 
which sought supremaey iu our land : an institution for 
which they have ever expressed the greatest abhorrence. 
The leading journals, political and religious, have persis. 
tently magniRed every success of our enemies, and at- 
tempted to belittle every victor}'- of our armies, and iti 
every possible way have endeavored to embarrass our 
govennnent. And the capitalists of England have given 
their money freely to sustain the cause of treason, and to 
keep up the credit of a band of traitors and thieves, while 
they have done all in their power to destroy our credit, and 
ihey have "for their pains" Confederate Bonds that are 
worth just what the\' can get for them, and a lien on a 
large amount of cotton that has been burned up or fallen 
into our hands. 

All this has tended to excite in us ugly feelings, and 
to suggest retaliation, and it will be a long time before we 
can feel towards the mother country as we have done. 
The " cut" has been too unkind to be forgotten, while it may 
be forgiven. Like rust on highly polished cutlery it will 
leave a stain after the rust is rubbed off. We had reason 
to expect better things from that quarter. If the people of 
Britain have any love for us they have been exceedingly 
unfortunate in their mode of exhibiting it; if they would not 
have rejoiced to see our government destroyed their actions 
belie them. But a great nation like ours can afford to be 
o-enerous, and to overlook even maliGfnant meanness. It 
would not add to our dignity or honor to go to war with 
Entdand. It is not best that we should. There was 
danger that we would drift into such a war when our own 
was over, and I know not that the danger is fully past ; but 
the spirit her people have manifested in view of our afflic- 
tion, has warmed, in a measure, our hearts towards them, 
and made us feel that after all, there may be less of hos- 
tility to our institutions, in that cradle of our nation, than 
Ave bad reason to suppose. The .sympathy of England with 



14 

tlie i^ebellion, we Lave never doubted, bad its origin in 
aristocracy and dollars and cents, but tbere is no money in 
it now and not much aristocracy, and the masses of the 
people, when they come to understand the nature of our 
struggle, will not only mourn with us for the death of our 
President, they will heartily rejoice with us in the suppres- 
sion of the rebellion. 

The venerable Dr. Dufi:' of Scotland, in a letter to George 
Stuart, Esq., of Philadelphia, occasioned by the death of 
Mr. Lincoln, says, in speaking of the apparent want of sym- 
pathy in the British Isles with us in our great struggle — 
" You may depend upon it, that if there was less manifesta- 
tion of sympathy than might be expected or desired, this 
arose wholly from misapprehension or ignorance of the 
principles involved and the real ends and objects contem- 
plated in the mighty warfare, and you may be very sure 
that just in proportion as these come to be better under- 
stood and appreciated the tide of sympathy will continue 
to rise higher and higher, wider and wider, stronger and 
stronger, till the last shred of avowed antipathy, or even 
neutrality, shall be resistlessly borne away by it." Ut- 
terances of this kind, from such a quarter, are exceed- 
ingly gratifying, and they are acting as a lightning rod 
in carrying oft* quietly the indignation of our people, and 
thus averting war. 

6. Another effect of the assassination, occurring as it did 
in the midst of our rejoicing over victories achieved by our 
armies, was to humble us in a direction tliat lue 7ieeded hum- 
bling, and to turn our thougJits more directly to Him ivho 
" giveth the victory ^ Our victories had been long waited 
for, and they were decisive of the contest. The Gibraltar 
of the Rebellion had been taken, and the leading general 
of the rebel army, the Napoleon of the insurgents, had 
surrendered with his whole army. If the war was not 
entirely over, we were confident we could see the end, 
and that the noble defenders of our country would soon 



15 

"come marcTiing home." Arrangements were made in al! 
our principal cities for such demonstrations of joy as had 
never been witnessed in our hmd before. It is right and 
proper to rejoice, but in rejoicing, such as filled our hearts, 
there was danger that we would forget God, and He saw 
that it was best to turn our rejoicing into mourning, and 
our feet from places of <lissipation to his sanctuary. And 
He did it eflectually. Never were our churches more 
crowded with solemn worshippers than on the diiy the body 
of the dead President was carried from the White House 
to the Capitol. We felt then, as Ave had never felt before, 
that the hand of God was on us. Our mourning may not 
have been as pleasant to us as rejoicing, but it was better 
for us, God saw it to be so then, and we can see it now. 
National mourning is better than national feasting, as a 
nation's soul is better than a nation's soil. Lincoln's death 
was worth more to the country than his life, or God would 
have spared him. The humblest soldier that has fiillen on 
the field of carnage, battling for the right, has not died in 
vain. The ashes of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, 
and the tree of civil liberty will grow more vigorously for 
the blood a.nd tears of patriots that have been poured around 
it. As the rejoicing of Israel over brilliant victories was 
turned into mourning by the king's sorrow for Absalom, 
so our rejoicing has been turned into mourning ; but our 
call to mourn has been, we have reason to believe, a blessing 
in disguise. 

7. There was a feeling on the part of many even in the 
North, at an early stage of the war, that the rebels were 
brave and generous, but "erring brethren," and that they 
were to be pitied, as the Poles or the Italians, who have 
struo-ofled in vain for libcrtv : but a marked effect of the 
assassination has been (o take from the rebellion every claim 
■it may have had on the sympatliy of noble-mind >'d, lionorable 
men, and to brand it icilh the mark of Cain. It has taken 
from the rebellion all poetry and sentiment, all the gorgeous 



16 

coloring in which its advocates liave presented it, and ex- 
hibited it, in all its deformity, a loathsome thing, a stench 
in the nostrils of all loyal and right-thinking men. No man 
can now have his name connected with the slaveholders' 
rebellion, and not bear the brand of au assassin. Lincoln 
was a victim to the foul spirit of treason, and all who have 
encouraged that spirit have kelped'to murder him, and they 
cannot but feel it. The rebellion and the assassination are 
inseparably linked together. They are mother and child. 
The iparent may disown her child, as there is a disposition 
to do, but the child will cling to the parent, as the shirt of 
Nessus to Hercules. The blood of the President is on the 
skirts of every traitor in the land, and cannot be washed 
out. It is the hind of blood tliai witl not ivash out. The 
assassination of Mr. Lincoln is the deepest curse with which 
the cause of the Confederates could have been visited. It 
has made it infamous, as nothing else could have done. 
Those who perpetrated the bloody deed meant it for evil, 
but God designed it for good. Grant and Sherman and 
Sheridiin, with their companions in arms, crushed the re- 
bellion, but the .assassins of the President gave to it an 
immortality of infamy from which the most inveterate rebel 
shrinks appalled. 

Once more : 2'he nsmssmatioii of the President has had 
the effect of teaching us in an impressive 2vay thai the Lord 
God omnipotent reifjneth, ami that He is not dependent on airy 
man for the carrying out of Jds pturposes. These he can and 
will bring to pass with our co-operation, or b}^ means of our 
opposition. He makes the wrath of man to praise Him. 
President Lincoln was a truly great man. His name is 

" One of the few, the immortiil n:aues 
That -weie not born to die." 

The people trusted in him, and, so far as we could see, he 
was needed. But God can do without him. The success of 
the cause he represented, and he so ably defended, did not 
depend on him. When Paul, the earnest and eminent 



17 

Apostle of the Gentiles, was shut up in prison in Rome, 
tbe enemies of the truth apparently triumphed; but it was 
only in appearance. The word Avas not bound, could not 
be bound. Flesh and blood will burn, but truth will not. 
The Apostles, with one exception, died as martyrs. Nero 
lighted his ])leasure-grounds with the burning bodies of 
Christians, but their doctrines continued to spread and "to 
turn tlie world upside down."' God does, in a most marked 
manner, overrule the death of his servants for the further- 
ance of his glorious purposes. When the enemies of Jesus 
had crucilied him, they felt that their work was done, their 
triumph complete ; as did the assassin of the President when 
in an exulting tone he exclaimed, after the deed was done: 
" aSic semper ti/rannis r^ and added: "The South is avenged!" 
The apparent victories of these enemies of the truth were 
their most crushing defeats. 

But, it is asked: "Would you compare the assassin of 
the President with the crueifiers of Jesus ?" Did not Booth 
claim that he murdered Lincoln because he was a tyrant, 
for the public good? Yes; he did. And did not those 
who put to death Jesus of Nazareth claim that they did it 
because he was a blasphemer f They did it, if we are to 
receive their statements as true, from pure benevolence. 
It was not safe that such a man should live. This was 
their plea. And when did any wicked man ever fail to 
claim, as a cover for his wickedness, that he was actuated 
by benevolent motives? It has been made by every traitor 
to justice and truth, from the Prince of Darkness, who was 
hurled from his seat in heaven to a dungeon in hell, to the 
prince of Confederate traitors, who has exchanged a Presi- 
dential mansion for the cell of a traitor and an assassin. 

The men who have betrayed the Government have been 
its trusted ones; they have had committed to their care for 
many years the sword and the purse. They commenced 
their work of destruction by stealing, as Judas did his, and 
they followed it up by making war on the Government, 
starving our soldiers in their prisons, massacring them in 



18 

their forts, blowing up our ships, burning our cities, and 
spreading pestilence through the North ; and to crown their 
work, they assassinated the President, They meant it for 
evil and for evil only ; but God designed it and has over- 
ruled it for good. Tlie success of Christianity did not, as I 
have said, depend on the lives of the apostles. They were 
put to death, but Christianity is still a mighty power in 
the world. Civil liberty in our land did not depend on 
Abraham Lincoln; he is dead, but the cause he advocated, 
and for which he died, still lives, and will live. It depends 
on the life of no man. It can no more be destroyed than 
the fire on our hearth stones. Yon may pui it out, but it 
will burn again. It is indestructible ; and the great princi- 
ples of civil liberty, found among all people, are as in- 
destructible. Our altars were lighted from England and 
France and Holland, and the coals from which they were 
lighted are still alive, notwithstanding all the efforts of the 
Stuarts, the Phillips, and Bourbons to extinguish them. 
The blood of the martyrs may flow in a stream ever so deep 
and broad, the cause of truth and righteousness is safe, for 
God takes care of it. The sons of Jacob may sell their 
brother into slavery, but his God can bring him to honor 
and power. The exiled Israelites may be thrown into the 
burning furnace in Babylon, but they will come out of it 
without the smell of fire on their garments. The enemies 
of our country have assassinated our President, but not the 
cause he represented. 

Of the rebellion generally allow me to say : Those who 
inaugurated it have very much to answer for. I'hey did 
not anticipate such a war as has scourged our land. They 
have received much more than they " bargained for." One 
of the leaders said, on the steps of the State House at 
Savannah, before the commencement of actual hostilities, 
by way of quieting all fears on the part of those who 
appreliended a serious conflict, "that he would drink all 
the blood that would be shed in a war growing out of 
secession." They did not believe that the people of the 



19 

North would fight. They construed our disposition to con- 
ciliate and compromise into cowardice; and under this 
impression inaugurated one of the most unnatural and 
destructive wars in the history of the world. We doubt 
not but that it will be overruled for good, but that fact 
does not detract from the guilt of the traitors, any more 
than the fact that Judas' treason was overruled for good, 
detracted from his guilt. They meant it for evil, and to a 
certain extent they accomplished their purpose. They have 
sacrificed hundreds of thousands of our strong young men, 
and made as many homes desolate ; and they have caused 
us to incur a debt of thousands of millions of dollars. 
Still, the material prosperity of the North has not been 
seriously eff'ected, nor our peace disturbed. But to the 
South the war has been utter desolation. Their young men 
have fallen in battle ; their substance is wasted ; and their 
princes are beggars. A large proportion of the people in 
the vicinity of Richmond and Charleston — those hotbeds 
of secession and treason — are to-day pensioners on the 
bounty of the Government they moved heaven and earth 
to destroy. There are very many of these deluded people 
who must absolutely starve during the coming Avinter 
unless they are provided for by the North. And as Joseph 
did not refuse his brethren corn because of their treatment 
of him, T trust we shall not refuse our brethren bread. 
Their retribution is terrible, overwhelming, absolutely 
annihilating, to all their cherished hopes. Almost every 
cause for which men have contended earnestly has had 
some redeeming features. This rebellion has none — abso- 
lutely none; and in its defeat there is every element of 
humiliation of which we can conceive. If the rebels can 
find any consolation in the thought that they have sacri- 
ficed every thing to rivet more firmly the chains of slavery 
on the millions of Africa's sons, on whose labor they have 
fattened, and not only failed, but in the effort broke off 
those galling chains forever, they may find comfort in their 
defeat ; it is the only oasis in their desert. They are con- 



20 

quered, impoverished, friendless, and dependent on their 
conquerors ; and they stand before tlie world charged with 
theft, treason, cruelty, falsehood, and murder. If Cain had 
reason to say, when cursed by his I\[aker and sent forth as 
a vagabond and a fugitive in the earth, "my punishment is 
greater than I can bear," the defeated, fleeing, starving, 
begging, and imprisoned traitors of the South might, with 
propriety, adopt the same language. 

While we have reason to mourn before God to-day under 
His heavy hand, we surely have reason to render thanks 
to Him that the occasion of our sorrow has effected so much 
for us. It has united ns as a people, more firmly ; it has 
revealed to us more fully, the designs of the leaders of the 
rebellion ; it has secured the carrying out of the President's 
views on the subject of emancipation ; it has called forth 
expressions of sympathy from the mother country that 
have softened our feelings towards her ; it has turned our 
rejoicing into mourning that has been good for us; it has 
so covered the rebellion with inftimy that men of noble 
impulses all over the world shrink from it as from a putrid 
carcass the exhalations of which are death, and it has 
tauo-ht us to "cease from man whose breath is in his 

O 

nostrils," and to trust more implicitly in Jehovah. He has 
indeed, turned our victory into mourning ; our light into 
darkness, but " He giveth songs in the night," by darkness 
he brings out the stars and makes the heavens glorious ; 
and brighter, far brighter, for our darkness will henceforth 
shine the stars and stripes in the banner that now waves 
" o'er the land of the free and the home of the Irave." 



